Operating Systems - Thomson Data Analyzer works on Windows XP (SP2), Vista, and Windows 7 platforms.
- TDA can be used by all users with an account on the computer, and does not require elevated user account privileges. However, the installation and license activation steps must be completed by a user with “Administrator” privileges.
- While not a requirement for running Thomson Data Analyzer, some of our Visual Basic scripts also require Java.
- UAC note (VISTA and Win7): For TDAv2.1, User Account Controls must be "off".
Microsoft Excel (2003 or later) - The TDA Company Report, Technology Report, Company Comparison Report, and several other TDA scripts require Microsoft Excel (2003 or later).
Recommended Processor - Pentium 4 or better.
With processors, clock speed is the most important attribute to Thomson Data Analyzer. The math in Thomson Data Analyzer is inherently linear so multi-threading has little impact on Thomson Data Analyzer performance. Hyperthreaded or Dual core processors are only helpful if you intend to run other operations while running Thomson Data Analyzer. If purchasing a Dual Core processor, please insure that the clock speed of each of the individual processors is at least as fast as a standard single processor.
AMD processors also work well; however, we have experienced overheating problems when running Thomson Data Analyzer.
We do not recommend running Thomson Data Analyzer on machines with Celeron processors. They do not have the math co-processing capabilities required by Thomson Data Analyzer.
Memory - The minimum recommended operating RAM is 1 GB.
For large record sets (>10,000 records), 2GB (minimum) to 3GB (preferred) RAM is recommended.
Thomson Data Analyzer is a 32-bit program so the maximum RAM Windows supports is 4GB. We have found some issues with Windows support of memory between 3GB and 4GB so we recommend 3GB. Thomson Data Analyzer files can be quite large and it is much easier to work with them if they can be loaded into RAM. Since Windows XP now takes up over 300MB of RAM to operate, 1GB of total RAM is recommended as a minimum. If the operating system has to use Virtual Memory to load a file into Thomson Data Analyzer, performance will be slower.
Disk Space - Thomson Data Analyzer uses about 80MB of disk space. This does not include the disk space needed for your data files, which can be quite large - typically no less than 5MB/1000 records.
Recommended Hard Drive Speed - At least 7,200RMP or faster
Since Thomson Data Analyzer files can be quite large, a fast hard drive reduces the time required to load the file from storage to RAM. Standard drive sizes are usually more than sufficient for Thomson Data Analyzer file storage. If you are planning to work with large files on a regular basis, it is helpful to have two separate hard drives - one for the operating system and one for storage. We have found that the Windows operating system virtual memory function tends to severely fragment large files over time which slows down performance. If the virtual memory is on the first drive with the operating system and data is stored on the second drive, then the files are less fragmented. (In theory, partitioning a drive should work but we have found that a second drive performs better than a single drive with two partitions.)
Display - Graphical and tabular outputs of Thomson Data Analyzer require a minimum of 1024 x 768 screen resolution.
Data - In addition, Thomson Data Analyzer requires that you have access to sources of bibliographic data and database definition files for these data sources. Database definition files are available for many popular databases and custom definition files can be coded for virtually any structured text database.
